Social Media Cleanup

Over the last few months I have seen people asking things like “What kind of stuff do I post to Twitter?” or “Why do I need a Google Plus account?”. I decided this would be a great time to explain each network and how I suggest to use them.

Social Media Posting Rules

I have a few rules that you should follow when posting to any social media network (or you know… life…).
– Treat other people as you would want to be treated.
– Don’t Feed The Trolls.
– Read your post before publishing it.

Facebook

I use Facebook to follow people that I don’t talk to anymore. It has been a great way to catch up with old high school friends and to learn about what is going on back in my hometown. I post links, photos and try to use my Facebook account to keep people updated on what is going on in my life.

Facebook Groups

We have a Facebook Group that we created very soon after Isabel’s birth. It was a private group that we used to share information with family before we were ready to start sharing with our friends. It really worked well. Since then we have made the group simi-public in order to allow other parents that have children with CHD to see our story.

Facebook Pages

Facebook pages are for businesses mostly. I have one for Kindred Web Consulting and don’t post to it as much as I should. It is a very good way to put out information to your customers. I use it as a way to let my customers know about new services and neat WordPress news.

Google Plus

I was all in when Google Plus stated. After the first few weeks, I started to lose my enthusiasm for the platform. My biggest problem was that I had 5 google email accounts and each one of them had their own Google Plus account. It was a little overwhelming. I have now narrowed it down to one account and will be posting the same information to Google Plus as I do to my personal Facebook page. My goal is to give my friends and family all the information they might want/need from me in the format that they like.

Google Plus Pages

Google Plus Business Pages are a must for every business. This is one of the easiest and most convenient ways to get listed as a Local Business when people search on Google. It is what sets your image on Google Maps and allows your business to show up in more often and higher in search engines.

Twitter

Twitter is great for quick updates. You have 140 letters to share whatever you would like. I use it to post quick links and some neat quotes I find.

LinkedIn

I am only on LinkedIn because it gives me a place to keep all my business contacts. I like the idea of LinkedIn but in small business it isn’t like you are going to link to the other 500 employees like you would in a large organization. It is a great place to have people recommend your business to others in their network. You can extend your network very quickly on LinkedIn with just a few recommendations from others.

I hope I have been able to give you a better idea of what each social network is and how it can be used. This isn’t an exhaustive list but it is a good start. How are you using the different social media platforms? Do you use them more for business or pleasure? Is there something you see on social media that really bothers you? Let me know in the comments.

Work Emergency?

I realized something this weekend during our trip to Denver. I work way more than I have to right now. In the past I have put in anywhere from 50 to 70 hour weeks for my day job and then come home only to start working on my night job.

I realized something this weekend during our trip to Denver. I work way more than I have to right now. In the past I have put in anywhere from 50 to 70 hour weeks for my day job and then come home only to start working on my night job. Since Isabel’s birth I have tried to cut back on both of those considerably but not near enough.

I have always been a very hard working person. I would bust my butt to get something done and sometimes, more often than not, that would mean I would bring my work home with me. My dad was a hard worker and I am sure I get it from him. I have always wondered if he ever regrets not being around more when we were little. Don’t get me wrong, he was there for every little league game and would drop everything to help with a question or just just play a game of poker before bed. He just spent a lot of time traveling and for some reason I just don’t remember him being around a lot on a normal day.

My lack of attention at home was especially bad when I had my office setup at home. I would work through lunch because I could and then not end up not shutting down until well after the work day was actually over. I decided a few weeks ago to stop using my home office and start working from our real office again. I also started setting an alarm telling me when it is time to start finding a stoping point for lunch time and then another alarm to start closing down for the day. It has been amazing how I haven’t lost any of my normal productivity and yet have been able to start spending more time with my wife and the girls. It feels like I have just cut out a lot of the nonsense and now I have freed up the time to get everything done.

I haven’t been able to completely remove myself from bringing work home but instead of jumping immediately at every issue I wait just a few minutes to see if it is really an emergency and then handle it accordingly. Most of the time it can wait until I am back at the office in the morning. I guess the moral of this post would have to be; by changing my definition of an emergency, I have been able to not take work home as often and spend more time with my wife and kids. Still not as much as I would like but I am getting closer!

Smile, It’s Monday!

I don’t understand why people say that they hate Monday’s so much. Looking at Facebook this morning I notice that there are two or three of my friends that post every Monday that they hate Monday’s. It is kind of silly to me.

I don’t understand why some people hate Monday’s so much. Looking at Facebook this morning I notice that there are two or three of my friends that post every Monday that they hate Monday’s. It is kind of silly to me. You would think these 20 or 30 somethings would have figured out that no matter what they do Monday is coming and they should prepare themselves for it. Today I am going to list out a few things I do so that I don’t hate Monday’s. Maybe you can use them to help out your Monday’s.

Don’t Quit Early on Friday

If you have stuff to do on Friday get it done. Don’t leave early because it is a Friday and leave a bunch of work that will have to get done first thing when you walk into the office on Monday. If you have a stack of paper work waiting on you Monday morning, how can you possibly have a good attitude about heading into the office.

Plan Your Monday in Advance

I set aside 20 minutes before I head home every friday to list out my To Do’s for the following Monday. This gives me the opportunity to see if I need to send out any last minute emails and have an organized starting point when I walk into the office Monday.

No Monday Morning Meetings

I try to never schedule meetings or phone calls on Monday mornings. This gives me the opportunity to put out any fires that might have happened over the weekend without having to worry about making it to that 8:30 conference call.

Be Early

One of the guys that used to work in the office with me when we were living in Tulsa used to always come in 45 minutes late each Monday. He would always blame it on the weekend and it being a Monday. He would spend the next hour apologizing for being late and rushing around trying finish up everything that should have been finished up on Friday.

Be a Nice Person

Say good morning to the people you meet. I suggest doing everyday but if you don’t start on a Monday. When you see somebody smile and say good morning. Smiling is contagious and puts everybody in a better mood. Plus being a nice person is just the right thing to do. You never know what the other person is going through and you might have just made their day by saying hi. I know I have had some days where another person smiling at me and saying good morning helped me have a better day.

My Jobs…

First of all I have to give photo credit to my wife and daughter! Pretty fitting for today.

I have 2 jobs right now. My day job is as a software developer at a software company that makes point of sale software. I also run my own web consulting business called Kindred Web Consulting. I love both my jobs because they both allow me to show people what technology can do to help them.

My Day Job

My day job has its ups and downs. I have always loved the fact that I have a ton of freedom and that we have been able to put together a fix for a customer in a matter of a few hours. One of the joys of working for a small company is that there is not near the amount of hoops to jump through when something needs to be fixed.

My Night Job

I love running my own business. I am able to make some of the decisions that I have suggested in my day job and not been able to do. My real passion is helping people use the Internet to better there lives and business and this is exactly what I do. I design and develop websites, audit social media and help educate my customers on how to create a consistent brand experience across all the different platforms they may be using. I am also going to start offering online classes that will teach people how to do different things with technology. These are going to range from how to schedule a post in Facebook to setting up your email on your mobile device. If you would be interested in something like that let me know about it. Fill out this form and let me know about the topic you would be interested in learning about.

I have been lucky to have a few friends and family give me the opportunity to have them be some of my first customers. It has been great how things have started to grow and I love that I am starting to get referral customers. Thank you to everybody that has suggested my services to people and if you know of anybody looking for a website feel free to give them my info.

Post a Day in May

Last month I read about a few people doing a post a day challenge and decided that would be a great way for me to get used to writing again. I decided that May is my month to see if I can dedicate myself to posting something each day to the blog.

Last month I read about a few people doing a post a day challenge and decided that would be a great way for me to get used to writing again. I decided that May is my month to see if I can dedicate myself to posting something each day to the blog.

Why Am I Doing This?

I have always wanted to level up my writing skills. I think I do a good job of expressing myself through writing but it takes me a very long time to write and way too much editing. I can write and article now and it will take me 2 or even 3 hours just to get to 200 words. I am hoping this will not only help my personal writing but also help me when it comes to lowing the amount of time it takes to produce content for some of my customers websites.

How I’m Doing It

I have 7 different index cards that I have written the 7 topics I want to write about each week. The seven topics are Career, Financial, Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Family and Social. For those of you keeping track those are the 7 topics that Zig Ziglar calls the “Wheel of Life.” In his opinion must be balanced equally in order to be successful in life. I figured it was a good place to start since it touches on every aspect of my life. Some of the topics will be very easy for me to write about. Others will be much more difficult. Keeping that in mind, each week I will have 1 day where I can decide to not write about the topic and just write about whatever might be going on. It will be interesting to find out if the topic changes each week or not.

Rules!

I have a hard time doing this list this without a few guidelines in order to keep myself on track. Below are a few of the rules that I am going to follow for the month.

  1. The posts must be at least 250 words.
  2. I cannot spend more than 45 minutes on the total article. No more than 30 minutes writing. No more than 10 minutes editing. No more than 5 minutes finding an image.
  3. All the posts must be written in MarkDown.

Final Thoughts

I spend too much time editing myself. I am going to write about what I am thinking and help myself work through some things. If I say something that you disagree with please let me know about it in the comments. Everybody has their own opinions and I enjoy hearing different sides to situations. Please keep things civil or I will delete the comments.